Thursday, July 28, 2005

Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, yesterday won financial and diplomatic support from China, although neither side said what the deal contained. According to David Monyae, a lecturer in the department of international relations at Wits University, China has aggressively been pursuing its economic interests in Africa – a consideration which could account for the agreement.

Monyae says China is interested in Zimbabwe’s chrome and gold resources. As such, China would not really be concerned with issues of good governance, he adds.

I bring up China because it's veto threat is stopping western governments from stopping the genocide in Dafur, and now in Zim..but also because as one who lives in Asia, I see how our local industries are undermined by low wages and an undervalued currancy in China makes our local products too expensive in the global marketplace...

However, at least China, for all their rhetoric on "solidarity" with the revolution, is really only interested in money, so in the long run, the Chinese will replace the Europeans and Indian entreupeneurs, and improve the economy... after the disasters and famines by Mao's policies, China is pragmatic and back to old fashioned power building.

However, the disease of rhetoric over reality still plagues much of Africa, and explains why the African union is blind to the realities around them:LINK

"It's sad that heroes like Mugabe have now become despots," he added.

Actually, the twentieth century has filled cemetaries with the victims of revolutionary heroes who became despots...where have YOU been for the last 100 years?

And earlier in the article shows the reality that just might wake up South Africa from their ideological slumber:

The food shortages and economic decline that have come to characterize life in Zimbabwe have prompted a mass migration of its citizens.

More than two million Zimbabweans now live in South Africa, according to Daniel Molokela, a Zimbabwean lawyer who works for the Peace and Democracy Project, a non-governmental organisation based in South Africa's commercial hub of Johannesburg. Molokela is involved in organising Zimbabwe's diaspora to work for change in the country.

Political repression in Zimbabwe has also played a role in the exodus of citizens to neighbouring states, and countries further afield...